“This is a singular way for a man to express himself, if he be an actual emissary from Sir Gilbert,” observed Trevelyan. “You are well assured of the exact truth of your story—are you? Then you would have us infer that you had received it second-hand. But pray continue, madam:—what else did this fellow tell you? We shall unmask him altogether presently—and perhaps his next move will be from hence to the presence of a magistrate.”
Mr. Green endeavoured to assume as much composure as he could possibly call to his aid: but he did not at all admire the aspect that things were taking—nor did he feel comfortable under the threat so plainly held out.
“Oh! my lord, what a snare has been spread for me!” exclaimed Mrs. Sefton, clasping her hands together in profound thankfulness that she had escaped the danger. “This bad man who now trembles in your presence, would have induced me to accompany him with the least possible delay to Liverpool,—thence to embark by myself in order to rejoin Sir Gilbert in New York. He has even about his person the funds to bear the expenses of my voyage:—and he would at once have hurried me away to Liverpool,—only, in the first place, a vague suspicion was excited in my mind,—and, secondly, I had particular—oh! very particular reasons for remaining in London at least a few hours longer——”
Mrs. Sefton suddenly checked herself: she was being hurried away by her excited feelings into allusions or positive revelations, on the verge of which she thus stopped short. Trevelyan did not, however, comprehend the motive of the abrupt pause which she made, but attributed it to the influence of her over-wrought emotions.
“Mr. Green—or whatever your real name may be,” exclaimed the nobleman, turning round upon the clerk, “what explanation can you give, sir, in respect to all this?”
“I know not by what right you demand any explanation, my lord,” said the man, determined to put as good a face upon the matter as possible.
“I will tell you by what right,” returned the patrician: “by the right which every man has to protect and defend a lady against the machinations of her enemies—by the right that every honest member of society has to unmask a villain——”
“Do you allude to me, my lord?” demanded Green, rising from his seat.
“I do, sir,” replied Trevelyan. “You are a villain, because you have lent yourself to an infamous trick. You cannot have been imposed upon—inasmuch as you have told many deliberate and wilful falsehoods. You pretend to have arrived straight from Liverpool, whereas you are undoubtedly a clerk in the office of Mr. James Heathcote—for you enacted the part of a clerk when I called there ere now. You would have induced this lady to quit London and repair to a foreign country, where nothing but disappointment—perhaps beggary—would have awaited her; and this act is so vile—so atrocious—so horribly base, that I can scarcely control my feelings—I can scarcely restrain my patience, while I thus upbraid you with your infamy. Were you a younger man, sir——”
But the nobleman stopped short, ashamed of wasting a menace upon one so unworthy of the honest ire of a generous soul.